Just
how rotten are things in the world today?
Really, really rotten – corrupt governments, outrageous evil, large
truly evil groups popularly called terrorist organizations, societies falling
rapidly away from God. Not a good time
in that sense to be on earth.
In
another sense, I think being here at the time of the last days is amazing –
many on earth will get to see the Lord’s return to collect his believers. And then those who are not his believers will
get to experience an extraordinary version of hell on earth beyond horrors we
can imagine.
It
is extraordinary how short-sighted people are.
Maybe that is just a condition of the human mind, or maybe it is a
condition of life in the US and the West today.
Certainly the increasing focus in the past twenty years on instant news,
instant communications, all sorts of technical devices such as the smart phone
that give instant information of a sort.
Many people today have trouble I expect in sitting still and quietly
focusing on anything, unless they have a game or phone in their hands.
We
have seen and read about all sorts of bad things in the past several months,
including recent terrors in California and Paris that directly bring modern
horrors to the western countries in a big way.
Yet a few days of calm and people are back to the normal life.
Have
things been calm worldwide? Of course
not. In just the past few days there
have been terrible terrorist attacks in four different countries – Burkina
Faso, Indonesia, Turkey, and Iraq.
And
these attacks are on people just like you and me; in these cases some of those
attacked were really good people out there trying to help the world.
Read
these few words from today’s NY Times about the victims:
A family of Canadian volunteers
dedicated to alleviating poverty in Africa. A group of intrepid German retirees
on a tour of Turkey and the Middle East. An Iraqi who had gone to Baghdad
seeking refuge from the jihadist violence of his hometown. A Canadian
audiologist who had fallen in love with Indonesia.
They were among the scores of people
slaughtered by Islamic extremists in four countries last week in spasms of
bloodshed that left loved ones stunned at the randomness of the killings.
“They did things like fix roofs and
repaint blackboards,” the mother of Maude Carrier, one of the Canadians killed in Burkina Faso, told The Globe and Mail, a Toronto newspaper.
“Who would want to kill people fixing blackboards?”
The settings for the attacks were the softest of soft
targets: a shopping mall in Iraq; a hotel and a cafe in Ouagadougou, the capital of
Burkina Faso; a popular shopping area in Jakarta, Indonesia; and Sultanahmet Square, the historic and cultural heart of Istanbul.*
Americans don’t think so much about
these attacks because they are in far distant lands. Americans have a custom of focusing on one
spot, the US. But these things could
have just as easily happened here in the US.
In these end times, things do get
increasingly worse. We have written
about Bible prophesy so much I seldom pull that out anymore, other than to
focus on where we are just now. You can
read about all the prophesies already fulfilled in our previous writings or
hear about that in our videos or CDs.
Now we are in the last of the last
days. The devil knows all that. He knows the Bible. He knows what is up. His time is up. So he is pulling out all the stops. Throwing in the kitchen sink. And terrible things are happening,
Deception is everywhere in the top ranks
of government, media, entertainment, education, business, and plain old
everyday life (as anyone with an ounce of discernment should be able to
realize). Remember, the Lord’s first
response to those disciples asking about our day was to watch so as not to be
deceived! So many non-believers occupy
key positions of leadership in various fields, and they are leading society
over the cliff. These are people whose
minds have been blinded by the evil one (2 Corinthians 4:4). They really can’t see the truth right
now. Neither can other
non-believers.
The old machinery of our society
continues to chug along, and there is hope among many that a change in
government or some other new change can turn everything around. Well, maybe change can bring some momentary
modification to what is going one. But
we are living in the last days. The Lord
will return at the appointed time. It
will happen. Nothing we do can change
that. And as we go through these days
the evil one with his minions will attack in diverse ways in families and
nations and societies in all the evil ways he can conceive.
Our focus now has to be on doing what we
can to get the truth out about the Lord’s return and about the Lord. None of God’s elect chosen before the
creation of the world should miss out on who he is. That is the reason for evangelism, to get the
word out to all that God intends to be with him (and pray God draws them to
Jesus – see John 6:44). Will there be some type of an end-time
awakening? Yes, although I do not know
how large or how many will be reached.
Even now there is awakening in some countries, such as Brazil.
I know most really do not want to hear
about all this and they are trying to hunker down and hope for a brighter
future in our existing society. Well,
there will be a brighter future---for believers in Jesus.
In all things today at all times, remember to
Keep Your Eyes on Jesus!
* (From NYTimes January 19
by Andrew Jacobs – “Week of Attacks, Scores of Civilian Deaths and a Question:
Why Them?”)
(January
19, 2016)
Copyright © 2016 by John
Newlin
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